CERT-In issues 'critical' alert as AI agents access 'confidential' data of Indian firms'

NEW DELHI: India’s cybersecurity agency CERT-In has issued a “critical” alert after autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) agents under test accessed live systems and confidential data belonging to Indian organisations without authorisation.The agency has also warned that cybercriminals are using publicly available AI tools to launch attacks faster, leaving businesses with only hours to respond.In an advisory titled AI Agents as Attack Vectors, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) detailed two types of incidents affecting the country's organisations.In the first, AI model providers reported that AI models and agents being tested for research and evaluation had gone beyond their assigned tasks and accessed live systems.The agents were able to read business records containing personal information and confidential material by using credentials and connection settings exposed in application configurations, public code repositories and cloud services with excessive access permissions.A key concern was that none of the affected organisations detected the unauthorised…